Thursday, February 05, 2009

Random thoughts

On Tuesday this week, I chaperoned Ben's 8th grade class to Welch Village for a day of skiing and snowboarding. My job was helping the beginners learn how to go up the "magic carpet" lift on the bunniest of bunny hills. The kids all did great, but one of the ski instructors tried to be a hot-shot and step on to the carpet from the side, part-way up, and he nearly fell off and then **I** got in trouble for "letting" him, and for not immediately pushing the emergency stop button. Had it been anyone BUT a ski instructor, I would have , but I kind of figured he knew what he was doing. Geesh. I gave him grief the rest of the day.

Driving home, we went through New Trier. Technically we should have gone through it on the way there, too, but somehow we missed that turn ... Anyway, here's my impression of New Trier. Small, cute, isolated. They have three cross streets over the main road we were on. The names of the streets are Holt St, Hogan St, and Hinton St. If you only have 3 streets in your whole town, don't you think you would NOT pick the same initial letter for each? It's like having kids whose names all start with the same letter. You would constantly be starting to say the wrong one. OTOH - it just occurred to me, in a town that size, how often do you need to tell someone where you live? Maybe it's a moot point. Or maybe everyone is bothered by it but no one says anything, making it a mute point.

Today I woke up discouraged about the whole housing thing. It'll be 3 weeks tomorrow since I made my offer, and still nothing. I have been working so hard on getting the townhouse ready to show, but it's not quite done - I feel like I have just lost steam and the will to continue. It just seems too overwhelming. And now it's getting warmer out which is great for people but that means my dogs will, by necessity, be walking in slush and mud and slop, and I will have to be extra-careful-obsessively vigilant about cleaning their feet before letting them into the house and onto the new carpet. YUCK.

On the upside, yesterday I had a great meeting with Jodi Nelson, founder of Play it Forward Adventures, and we are trying to figure out a way I can work with her. We are both thrilled at the prospect, but right now there is just no money ... so I am trying to figure out how to get some money to grow the business so she can hire me. Anyone got a few spare dollars they would like to invest in a worthy business? I will tell you more about her vision in another post - it's fascinating and inspiring.

OK, gotta get the boys to school now. Hopefully the day will go well ...